DIARY: Tobacco tax has manufacturers group fuming

April 26, 2002

Where there's smoke, there's often disappointment. The Tobacco
Manufacturers' Association is peeved this week after its tenacious
lobbying strategy to push for a tax cut or freeze on tobacco duty was
razed to the ground by Gordon Brown in last week's Budget.

Unless the Government took action, it argued, smuggling of cigarettes
and other tobacco products would continue to undermine efforts to reduce
smoking - as well as lose the Treasury billions of pounds.

Brown's tax-raising agenda was not about to be blown off course by a bit
of lobbying from Big Tobacco - he slapped on 6p a pack, in line with
inflation.

Alas, there's more trouble ahead for marketers in the pro-smoking lobby.
An ad ban brought about by anti-smoking Liberal peer Tim Clement-Jones
is set to sail through parliament and into law by the start of June.

No doubt the air will be thick with despair as the pro-tobacco lobbyists
pack the bar at the Last Gasp Saloon around the end of May.